Headed out to lunch today since this is the first day this month that neither of us are sick. Just in time to get snowed in by the latest snowstorm that I’m sure The Weather Channel has assigned some stupid name to. Now for some news links …

Is Slidefire about to Akins themselves? I’m not entirely certain how that sled works, but my understanding has always been if you have some mechanical contraption actuate the trigger, but your action is to press some device that counts as a single function, you’ve got a machine gun on your hand.

This is a good question regarding Sean Penn. I think there have always been different rules for Hollywood in California. Though misdemeanors can typically be expunged, which would restore rights provided the expungement fully restores rights, causing the conviction to be free of legal effects.

17 Responses to “Monday News Links”

I think you mischaracterized or misquoted that interview with Mike Fifer. He’s actually saying the opposite of what you seemed to say. Here’s exactly what he says in the recorded video:
“Hi, I’m Mike Fifer. I’m CEO of Ruger Firearms, and I want to talk to you today about California and all the foolishness that’s going on there. We’re being forced out of the state by the California DOJ. This insistence on microstamping, which doesn’t work, is denying you your rights to have access to these guns. We are NOT abandoning the market at all. We are trying our hardest to stay in the market. We’re committed to California, and we’re fighting this every inch of the way.”

Effective lobbying does start in the local gun shop. The problem is that the local gun stores are filled with people who suck at lobbying. They would rather post, on the store walls, chain emails about the IRS wanting you to declare guns on your tax return. This kind of FUD spreading does not help the cause. It wastes resources on stuff that’s only a myth. The local gun store and it’s employees are becoming a bigger and bigger joke with the nonsense they are pushing. NSSF really needs to help them sort fact from nonsense, and call out the nonsense.

Agreed. We should have, in every local Gun Store, Gander Mountain, Sportsman’s, etc. a large post on the noticeboard that shows all the upcoming bills in that states legislature. In large print, with a list of the good bills and a list of the bad, where possible.

They could also have small cards with similar information, along with a link to the local organization at every counter and checkout. Hell, they should be doing voter drives and bussing our people in.

How many more Magpuls do they need to see before they realize that the politics of this is upon them, whether they would accept it or not? The NSSF is doing good work, but all Dealers need to realize that they have a stake in both Federal and Local politics. Magpul only learned that lesson when they were under threat. They might have been able to do more if they were actively pushing back in the years before.

It’s long past damn time that we become the Gun Lobby the antis are so afraid of.

I don’t agree with the article stating that politicians are scared about losing jobs and tax revenue due to their anti-gun policies. As far as New York and Colorado jobs be damned. We want that gun-control!

Two recalls and a resignation in CO. They are very afraid right now. I just wish that PA had recall procedures. When politicos feel they have no blacklash they will do dumb things. There are a lot of lawmakers in CO who are walking on egg shells.

Most all of us are already NRA Members. We need to get more people onboard. But I’ve met gun owners who don’t even know who the VCDL is, and they’ve lived in VA far longer than I have.

We need to be onboard with the local organization also, and we need to ensure greater visibility, such as the idea proposed above. If every time you saw your local gun rights groups name whenever you went to get ammo, we’d potentially have a lot more members.

No offense, but the NRA does nothing productive at the state level in PA. I haven’t been in this whole political activism game very long, but I’ve been around long enough to know that Hohenwarter is largely responsible for HB40 not being made law in PA a year earlier (his shenanigans delayed things enough that the legislature wasn’t able to have a veto override vote).

No offense, but the NRA does nothing productive at the state level in PA.

I have been in the activist game a long time and this is just not true. I did an interview with John Hohenwarter a few years ago when all this stuff was going on. The image of Hohenwarter and NRA in this state has been carefully crafted by people who have a beef with NRA. They do a lot more than you realize.

For the NRA to be productive in this state, they NEED to work together with the actual grassroots pro-gun organizations in this state. The NRA doesn’t do this.

At this point, the reality is that the major player in that realm is FOAC (especially now that CGOBC/CGOPA has basically now become a quasi-FOAC East). The absolute FACT of the matter is that the NRA and FOAC do not play ball. We could spend hours arguing about it, and playing he-said she-said arguing about it (as is the case with HB40 matter; There’s pretty much Hohenwarter’s side and FOAC’s side), but the actual point is that the NRA-ILA doesn’t seem to be interested in working with the groups on the ground.

Whether or not Hohenwarter’s side of things is accurate (and it might be), the problem is that he took it upon himself to run around the statehouse alone while completely ignoring all the grassroots boots-on-the-ground who were also present and playing to a different tune. In other words, rather than taking time to talk with the FOAC people who were there in order to try to get EVERYONE on the same page, he went off and played the whole “I’m from D.C. and I know what’s best for you” game.

In short, Hohenwarter is ineffective at best, and the fact that PA isn’t the only state where he has pissed off local grassroots groups is another big point against him.

The absolute FACT of the matter is that the NRA and FOAC do not play ball.

Is that NRA’s fault or FOAC’s fault? I wouldn’t argue that NRA does a great job of working with grassroots in Pennsylvania. I think they leave a lot to be desired in that regard. But I’m not sure that all the bad blood is on NRA’s side of things.

Whether or not Hohenwarter’s side of things is accurate (and it might be), the problem is that he took it upon himself to run around the statehouse alone while completely ignoring all the grassroots boots-on-the-ground who were also present and playing to a different tune.

Lawmakers control who gets invited to closed door meetings. If NRA gets invited, and other groups don’t, that’s just the way things work. I wouldn’t expect NRA to stay out of those closed door meetings out of some kind of principle, because that would be foolish. I agree John doesn’t do a great job of communicating with grassroots. I would fault him on that. But I don’t think he deserves a lot of the reputation he’s been painted with by other groups who resent the fact they don’t have the same level of access.

As I’ve expressed elsewhere, I believe that the root cause is the institutional culture of the NRA-ILA: They don’t seem to like to play well (read: at all) with local grassroots organizations. Sure, there may be some bad blood on the FOAC side of things, but from talking with FOAC leadership it seems to me that it’s more of a “woman scorned” situation. What always seems to be implied (and everything I have witnessed would seem to confirm this) is that FOAC personnel have reached out to the NRA, so that everyone can work together, and have largely gotten no response.

Our opponents are able to be effective (to the extent that they have successes) because they get together and play by the same agenda. The NRA-ILA (or at least Hohenwarter) seems to think that this concept is a waste of time, so they don’t do it. More than anything else, the NRA-ILA needs to understand this.

Lawmakers control who gets invited to closed door meetings. If NRA gets invited, and other groups don’t, that’s just the way things work. I wouldn’t expect NRA to stay out of those closed door meetings out of some kind of principle, because that would be foolish. I agree John doesn’t do a great job of communicating with grassroots. I would fault him on that.

I certainly understand the nature of closed-door meetings, and I also understand the desire to keep key strategies under wraps.

That being said, I think a LARGE part of the issue is the perception that Hohenwarter is willing to run around having closed-door meetings with all the major anti-gun pols (like Leach and the Philly crowd), but he won’t take the time to sit down with FOAC to compare notes (even just a basic legislative agenda, not including detailed strategies) and make sure everyone is on the same page of the same agenda. Having us working two separate agendas reduces our potential effectiveness, and breeds antipathy (from the sounds of it, the whole HB40 affair is a prime example of this).

As far as the whole FOAC vs. Hohenwarter/NRA-ILA feud goes, I might also be more inclined to believe that less of the fault was with JH/NRA-ILA if the issues were only present in PA. The fact that grassroots gun-rights orgs in NH (and possibly other states too; I haven’t done a huge amount of digging) also have had issues with Hohenwarter seems to suggest that the problem IS Hohenwarter (or at least his lobbying style, and unwillingness to talk to grassroots orgs).

What is the PA equivalent of the Virginia Citizens Defense League? I have asked this before, but who is our “group”? We have a few, I know, but who has gotten to critical mass here? If there’s something that bothers me is that there are so many different groups here in PA that represent factions.

Concerned Gun Owners of PA (CGOPA) recently merged into FOAC. From talking with the involved parties, I got the distinct impression that the plan is for CGOPA to become a sort of FOAC-East, with both groups pushing a unified political agenda. This, in turn, should make FOAC a far more effective organization politically, as it will destroy the notion that FOAC only matters near Pittsburgh.